John Leigh: On Gandalf, pyromania and attending one's own funeral...

Interview – 2009

John Leigh is one of NZ's most versatile and experienced actors, with more than 60 screen credits to his name, including roles in Outrageous Fortune, Serial Killers, Shortland Street,800 Words and movie Pike River . From early beginnings in the Wellington theatre scene, he got his first major TV role as nice guy Lionel Skeggins on Shortland Street. His talents also extend to voice work, including numerous advertising campaigns.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Leigh talks about:

Early acting roles
Playing Lionel Skeggins on Shortland Street, and a theory on his own disappearance
The challenges of fast turnaround TV comedy Spin Doctors
A real fire on the set of Outrageous Fortune
Bringing soap parody Serial Killers to life
Upstaging American actor Michael J Fox during the making of The Frighteners
Playing Hama in Lord of the Rings, and working with Sir Ian McKellen

This video was first uploaded on 3 September 2009, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – James Coleman

We got off the bus and everyone's sort of waving frantically. And Micheal J Fox goes 'oh, yeah, yeah' . And they all, when they got off the bus [said] 'Lionel!'. That was quite funny . . . they're little kids they wouldn't have seen probably a lot of his work. But they knew mine . . . the fact that Kiwis were watching Kiwi telly, I was kind of happy about that.
– John Leigh on being recognised as his character Lionel while filming The Frighteners in Lyttleton

John's Full Profile